Singapore American School

Singapore American School was founded in 1956. It is a non-profit, co-educational day school which offers an American curriculum with an international perspective for students from preschool through Grade 12. SAS has 3800 students from over 50 countries as well as 330 teachers. Their campus is located on 37 acres of land and includes state-of-the-art facilities.

The essential elements of SAS are known as “The Vital Few.” They are: Academic Rigor, Extraordinary Care for the Welfare of Each Child, and Professional Excellence. Sounds good so far. Let’s see what else they have to offer.

The SAS Mission Statement:

The mission of the Singapore American School is to provide each student the highest quality American educational experience that inspires a passion for learning and intellectual vitality, and that instills the competence, confidence and courage to contribute to the global community and to pursue her or his dreams.

The SAS Core Values:
•    Compassion
•    Honesty
•    Fairness
•    Responsibility
•    Respect

The Physical Facilities

The SAS campus was completed in 1996 (I visited just as they were opening and it was very impressive). The school has a primary school with purpose built early childhood classrooms with a library/media center, computer labs, music, art and Mandarin classrooms and more. The intermediate school includes grades three to five and is located adjacent to the primary school and has facilities similar to the primary school. The middle school classrooms are clustered in groups to facilitate large group activities. There are special instruction rooms for technology, art, band, choir, home-living, dance, and computers. There are six science labs as well. The high school has everything that the middle school has including a 25-meter pool that they share with the middle school. The high school also has its own cafeteria that serves local and western cuisine.

SAS has a performing arts building which includes an 800-seat auditorium with computerized lighting and surround sound, a 300-seat drama theater, a 150-seat theater/studio and a 350-seat multi purpose theater. Wow! All of this is quite impressive, but we’re not done yet.

There is an athletic complex as well, which features an all weather track and field stadium that seats 1000. Additionally, there are five lighted tennis courts, two soccer/football fields, a baseball field, two softball fields, two pools and a high-ropes course. Yes, there’s more. There are four large, air conditioned gymnasiums and two smaller gyms, along with weight training facilities.

The Faculty

There are over 330 faculty members at SAS with sixty percent holding a Master’s Degree. Seventy percent of the faculty is American with most of the rest coming from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. The average tenure for faculty members is six years. Teachers have extensive professional development opportunities at SAS.

So SAS sounds incredible. A huge school with great facilities, a large faculty, a mixed student body, located in beautiful Singapore. How do you get a job there? Well, this is what you need:

•    A Valid teaching credential in subject area.

•    Two to five years teaching experience in the area of the vacancy.

•    A familiarity with recent elementary and/or secondary U.S. teaching materials and methodologies.

•    Experience working in a multi-cultural, U.S., or international school setting.

•    Experience and commitment to sponsoring extracurricular activities.

If you have all of the above, you can download an application on the school website and view a working at SAS video (my connection is too slow to see the video).

SAS is one of those schools that I’ve always had a desire to work at, but just never got around to applying due to the peculiarities of my own employment history – jobs have just fallen into my lap when I needed them so I’ve never had to apply for a job after I landed my first one. But, if I was going to go around again, this is one school that would be high on my list of places to work.

The website is quite good, but they dropped the rather extensive section that they used to have explaining benefits for teachers and life in Singapore – that’s a shame because it was quite good, and for prospective teachers it’s helpful to have an idea of what sort of benefits are available as well as information on the quality of life in Singapore.

Next review will be on my old stomping grounds, Lahore American School.